Monday, 5 September 2016

Fuck off or Fuck It?

These are my kitchen scales, not nearly as pretty as an old balanced scale, but I tossed all that sort of stuff years ago. Maybe I should have kept 'em?

I reckon your 50's are a time for decision making, a time when because people seem to ignore or not see you, when you get to decide stuff and the consequences are somehow less significant, perhaps this social too old to be of any importance and too young to be too much of a medical nuisance, helps.

So it's OK to spend some time sorting things into boxes. Not kitchen equipment type stuff, although I do enjoy a good 'chuck-out' of old broken useless, what the fuck is this? stuff. No I am thinking of issues and ideas and reactions and people and methods and more esoteric shit.

If you are packing up a house the experts reckon you need 3 boxes: keep, throw, donate. All pretty self explanatory.

But the esoteric stuff can be even more simply sorted, into FUCK OFF or FUCK IT.

The Fuck Offs are the things that drive you so mad that you end up in a dribbling spitting heap on the floor. They are the things that drive you to email overload or screaming banshee status while on hold AGAIN. It's the stuff that if you actually get to shout, 'Fuck OFF' at 'em, you know you will either be hung up on or the police will be around to arrest you for being too annoyed, or something.

All government departments

Noisy neighbours

Real Estate Agents

Telco Providers

Business scammers.

(Yeh we all know this is not the limit to my list - I am pretending to be calm today)

Fuck Its are things that truly just don't matter:

the weather

the number of days til christmas

broken nails

another pimple and more wrinkles

burning the dinner

shit service or food at a cafe - maybe not, depends on mood and energy this one!

barking dogs

bad drivers

broken things

rudeness

traffic jams

stupidity

other people's children

just about anything that fits into the 'what ever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' category.

I know, who'd have thought my Fuck It list would be so long?

It'd be excellent if the 'fuck it' list grew in proportion to the demise of the 'fuck off' list. I can't decide if training your mind to say, 'oh well never mind', instead of feeding the red mist of rage is a good thing, except that I am sure your bloody pressure would thank you.

So I think your 50s are years to spend time trying to prepare to launch yourself into the sanguine 60s. I have a good while til I am 60, and I am glad cos I am still fucking far from sanguine about things that give me the shits.

And I am not sure how to change the habits of a lifetime. I rather imagine that if I hit the actual truthful Sanguine State people will ask Stevie if I have had a lobotomy or if senility has set in.

So I guess there is always gonna be a balance, unless you are a walking time bomb or Mother Theresa, and didn't the Pope just put her into a cannon?